Developers at the small companies that I have worked at have had at least some input into business needs. Developers are often aware of solutions that do not o

Developers at the small companies that I have worked at have had at least some input into business needs. Developers are often aware of solutions that do not occur to the business people. A business person might think we are being as efficient as we can be in process P, but then a developer may come along and say we can automate parts of process P by implementing solution S, for example. A lot of the time this sort of thing does not happen in the scheduled, structured meetings, or in email chains, or in video conferences. It happens when people in the office approach each other "out of the blue" and decide to grab a conference room and work something through face-to-face.